Fire
by Keeper of Tomes
Summary: 52 of the 100 Challenge. A match is lit, and the wolves are set free. "Youth, dear, is not as innocent as it used to be..." Possible re-write in the works. -The T rating is a very HIGH T rating. You have been warned.-


**Title: **Fire**  
Author: **Keeper of Tomes**  
Songs: **"Fire," and "Demons Die," by Second Person, "A Rush of Blood to the Head," Coldplay, and "Teenagers," by MCR**  
Summary: **52 of the 100 Challenge. A match. "Youth, dear, is not as innocent as it used to be..."**  
Words: **??**  
Pairing(s): **DA/P

I don't enjoy making young girls cut themselves, it just happened. This and "Touch" are what happens when the emo side of me comes popping out.

Happy Hug an Asian Day!

Have _you _hugged an Asian yet?!

* * *

_i used to play with matches,_

_when i was very small,_

--

_Pfffft..._

_SSSS..._

The crackle of a freshly lit match fills the air. She had asked to light the candles that evening, because she enjoyed flipping through the closet for those red tipped sticks of flame, enjoyed drawing them across the rough sandpaper, and enjoyed watching the fire consume the wood, bit by beautiful bit. The flames lapped at the darkness, ate at it, and touched the tips of her dark fingers. Then, and only then, did she blow it out. After sucking on the burning digits, she'd reach for another, light the candle wick on fire, then proceed to allow the match burn itself to her hand.

The old woman in the only dark corner of the room coughed. The girl dropped the shards of charcoal and walked over to her caretaker for the evening. Sitting down on the rough carpet, the girl's amber eyes flickered in the candlelight with excitement. The old woman leaned forward, her own eyes glimmering with anticipation, mirroring the child's with stunning and scary accuracy.

"What do you want to hear, tonight, dear?"

And the girl had to think, because these stories were never to be taken lightly. They were not an average six year old's fairy tales. These stories began the same as the others, yet always had their own dark and dangerous twists, their own mysteries, embedded deeply inside the words. Here, in this shadowy and quiet house, there was no such thing as a happy ending.

The woods outside were tossed to and fro by a coming storm. And she fancied she heard a wolf howl, though it was no doubt just the wind, just the tempest, ripping at leaves. So she smiles softly, leans back on her palms, and speaks.

"The Wolf, gramma." A voice like cobwebs in a dusty corner.

"The Wolf it is," the old woman croaks. And she proceeds to speak...

--

_legends of wolves and witches,_

_i memorized them all._

--

"...he slipped into the forest, swearing revenge on Red Riding Hood. And on stormy nights, when his howl can be mistaken for the gale, he crouches low to the ground, creeps into the city, and finds young girls. He invades their dreams, steals their good thoughts, and replaces them with concoctions of his own: hellish nightmares, dangerous misconceptions, screams of reality...So beware, Piper, darling. Or he just might...getcha!"

The girl screams with giggles, as her gramma's knobbly hands find her soft spots and starts tickling. But the laughter is gone as soon as it came, because her face is serious, as she stares into the little fires sitting atop the candles. "Why do you tell me these stories, gramma?"

The old woman pauses. Piper's never asked these questions, Piper's never wondered this deeply.

"Why do you need to know, Piper?"

"Well, the other kids at school, whenever I tell them, always say that it's wrong. That the way I tell it is wrong..." She sighs. "That the way _you _tell it is wrong."

Gramma looks at the child before her, looks deep into the amber eyes that glitter like flames themselves. "Youth, dear, is not as innocent as it used to be..."

...and she refuses to say anything more.

--

_so many nasty stitches, _

_so many jagged blades,_

--

_Pfffft..._

_SSSS..._

The parlor is lit up with crystals and candles alike, but more of the former. There's not much twelve-year-old Piper can say. Her gramma's stiff and trembling hands are wrapped around her thin shoulders; the black dress she wears is far too big and trails on the floor. It rustles, hisses, replaces the crackle of the wicks burning that she cannot hear.

The bodies are still and silent; waxy and pale, they are effigies of living humans. Because they cannot be her darling parents, cannot be her friend's brother, cannot be...the people she loved, the people who hugged her when she cried, kissed her boo-boos, poured her milk when sleep wouldn't come...Gone. The only people she had left were fading fast; gramma was getting old, and her playmate and neighbor Aerrow's parents had decided to leave, the haunting memories of their oldest son too difficult to bear.

And then there was the person responsible for it all, a dark haired boy who'd tossed her into the air, she and Aerrow, one after the other, had laughed and teased, toyed, played...A wolf in sheep's clothing, just as her grandmother's stories had warned her of. _He'll sneak into your heart and carve a den for himself there, then watch the blood drain from it, bit by savage bit..._

Her gramma touches her dry and cracked lips to Piper's forehead; the girl's almost taller than her, now. She whispers, "I'm sorry," into midnight blue hair, before letting go and peering into her son's coffin with remorse. Looks at his amber eyes, snapped shut for eternity.

That evening, Piper locks herself in her room and flings herself onto the bed. What's the point of living? Her friend is gone, her parents are gone, her _life _is broken, like a big, beautiful mirror that showed something ugly. Water clung to the windows from a morning shower, the beacon tower glimmered in the distance, her surroundings became a chain of memories that would embed themselves in her memory. Her heart was throbbing, yet no pain came. She so _wanted _to be angry, so wanted to hate someone other than herself, but it was impossible.

She could do nothing but despair.

And that was when the cutting first began.

It started with harmless nicks, ways to let blood from the wolf's wound flow into open air and dissipate. Yet for some strange reason, it brought more than just release, it brought...it brought adrenaline, it brought momentary happiness. Thoughts of how Aerrow, how her parents, how gramma would react to her behavior, drifted blissfully to the back of her mind. She would collapse onto bed, the open wounds throbbing, drawn sharply across old scars.

Long sleeved shirts became her friend, even in the summer. She would hide them, explaining her secrets away with carefully placed lies...

And then, one night, she let the blade dive too deep. The door wasn't locked, and that was her only blessing, because if it had been barred, then gramma would not have been able to hobble in; gramma would not have been able to see her, sprawled on the floor, blood flowing from her arms. And she would've died. But she didn't.

Not really.

--

_i tidied up the pieces,_

_i tried to mend my ways._

--

Two years later, after her parent's deaths and her love affair with knives, Piper is happy again.

Aerrow comes home from the Academy with full honors, a sign that big things await him. He's the youngest to ever be knighted, a feat considered amazing at best. He's brought several friends with him: An egomaniac named Finn, a Wallop named Junko, and a little unknown dog-like species named Radarr. He knocks on her door, and she answers, smiling at the sight of his much-missed face.

And then he hands her an invitation: to travel the skies with him and his team, in the name of his dead brother, bringing peace and justice to all of Atmos. To take down Cyclonia, once and for all.

The thought excites her, sets fire to her bones. She so wants to go, yet she _needs _to stay; gramma is clinging loosely onto the last strands of life. So her answer is no, maybe another day, and yet the Sky Knight's eyes show that he'll never stop hoping. She returns to her room, returns to the volumes of crystals she's been poring over her entire life, because her fascination has always been great.

Two days later, gramma's confined to her bed.

Five days later, the doctor emerges from the old woman's room, shaking his head.

A week later, Piper's sitting beside her grandmother, holding the wrinkled and speckled fingers. Yet no tears come. No tears come, because a horrible thought is growing, like fire, in the back of the young girl's mind. _I can leave. The anchor's getting pulled up...No, the anchor's being cut and left behind._

The old woman senses this. She raises her other hand and touches her granddaughter's cheek. Piper turns to see a smile on the lips of the person who raised her. She says but one sentence: "Remember the wolves."

And then she expires, with a puff and a trail of smoke.

Like a match, like a candle.

--

_but he came right out of nowhere,_

_like an unfamiliar tune,_

--

She looks through the periscope.

A face looks back.

She has heard his name many times since the incident, has heard of his horrific deeds and the undying loyalty with which he serves Master Cyclonis. She swallows her fear and yet, cannot help but think how predatory he looks, swooping in on a kill. Some have compared him to the blackest hawk of all, but he is more wolf-like than anything. The sheep's skin has been torn off and done away with; the true colors are showing at last. No white flags of surrender from either side are due to appear any time soon. And although she is worried when Aerrow is knocked to the ground, and the Aurora Stone snatched and taken away, she was not surprised.

"Aerrow!"

He pulls himself up to his feet; she walks over and inspects him, but he's alright. He promises revenge will come, promises that they'll get that damned crystal back. They fly to Cyclonia, and they do. She stays on the ship with Stork, but she doesn't want to. She wants to be up there, to see the man again, to see the wolf. The Dark Ace.

She knew him when he was still human; Aerrow did, as well, yet he chooses not to remember such details. No doubt the wolf itself had long forgotten the amber and emerald eyes of children that he once laughed with.

She tells herself she hates him.

But she _can't..._

--

_sat down upon my armchair,_

_and opened up my wounds._

--

_Pffft..._

_SSSS..._

The handcuffs dig into her flesh, painful. She's sitting on a cold and stiff chair, and someone has lit a candle. The scent of burning wick and dispersing smoke fills the tiny chamber she's in. At least, she assumes it's tiny, because all noises are muffled and dim. Perhaps that's due to the bump on her head...

She can't see; a bag is on her head. It's soon done away with, however, and her eyes are filled with the Master's smiling, leering face. She's holding the candle right up beneath Piper's nose. "Hello, dear," Cyclonis hisses, her voice dangerous, low, a whisper. "Long time, no see."

Piper spits; the candle splutters and goes out. More smoke. And darkness.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," Cyclonis titters. "We're being a bad girl, now, aren't we? But don't worry. All you have to do is...talk."

"Never."

Cyclonis reaches into her cloak, as if looking for something, and Piper readies for dangerous items of torture. A new crystal, perhaps, or a whip? But no. She takes out a communicator. Presses a button. Speaks. "Dark Ace, please come down to the holding cell. You're needed." Piper cannot hide the gulp of saliva that slid down her throat. Her captor notices, and presses a dark-nailed finger to cinnamon colored skin. "Don't worry, darling. I'm sure he'll be gentle..."

The door slides open with a hydraulic hiss. He comes in, and all she can see of him are his glittering red eyes. Cyclonis departs. He draws up a chair; she can hear the legs scrape across the floor. He strikes another match, relights the candle, and sets it on the ground between them. He is seated, and he is smiling; when he smiles, he shows all his teeth.

She does not know what to expect, does not know what to make of the frantic pounding inside her chest. Caged birds beat their wings against the walls of their prison, their beaks clamped shut by glue; painful memories rise up to her throat and come out, strangled whimpers. Yet it is not fear that resounds inside her soul. She is not scared, not when he presses her firmly against the back of her chair, not when he pulls out a switchblade from his pocket, not when he removes her cuffs, then picks up her bare arm and examines it.

Small, faint, pale little scars, barely visible, shimmer on her lower arm. "So you know pain," is all he hisses, his mouth close to her ear. His breath is warm and raises goosebumps; she's been sitting in cold far too long to enjoy any kind of heat. "Then let's see how you like..._this_." And he draws the shiny blade across her skin. A quiet gasp escapes her, nothing more. Warm blood runs down her arm, to the tips of her fingers, and onto the floor. "Where." Cut. "Are." Cut. "The others?"

"I don't..." A muffled yelp. "I don't know...!"

Three glowing lines cross her skin. Pain is rippling across her body, sending shock-waves into her mind. She wishes for numbness, yet none comes, just screaming, fiery, pain...

"You don't know? That's a pity." Another cut, another whimper. He slices deep this time. She bites her lip and inflicts a wound of her own. Her tongue tastes blood. Piper wants to scream. Yet she knows that's what he's waiting for: a crack, something he can exploit. Silence, at the moment, is her friend. "A real. Pity." His red eyes shimmer. He might as well just bite her now, and fulfill the wretched image of animal-ism that she's been associating him with, all these years.

"I...No! I...I..." Her breaths are forced, labored. Desperate.

He leans forward, the candle in his free hand, and holds it up to her eyes. Begins to ask: "Whe-"

Then is cut off.

The amber of her orbs silences him. The blue of her hair. In battle, she was nothing but a tool, something to get the Sky Knight to overreact and follow him with. For some reason only Snipe's stupid mind could conjure, the brute had captured her during a dogfight and brought her back. But a memory, distant and surreal, drifts to the top of his mind, a bead of oil in stagnant water.

"Why did you stop?" Her lips are dry, and the blood on her arm is clotting. The pain is dimming. Receding.

He drops her arm and wipes the blade clean on the front of her shirt. No answers come, just this: "I'll be back, later."

--

_i put up no resistance,_

_so insistent was desire,_

--

The new cell is larger than the other one, and has a cot and writing desk. But no paper, no pens, and no windows through which she could contact her friends.

She was telling the honest truth when she said she knew not where they were. She's been missing for only a day; no doubt, they're looking for her, planning a rescue right now. She can just image Aerrow trying to be logical, Finn throwing in his outrageous ideas, Junko jumping up and down frantically, and Stork fainting every few moments. While Radarr raids the kitchen, of course.

There is a thin layer of cloth coating her left arm, which is slashed with four, burning-red lines. Three of them are light, and will no doubt heal, but the fourth worries her. The ugliest welt of them all. She whimpers.

Someone's coming, footsteps moving, breathing amplified, by the walls of her prison. His red eyes appear between the bars of her cell, and the darkness seems to give him no form, until he turns on his sword. She cannot help but tense up her body. There is no place for her to hide, and he could easily shoot her from where he stands. The range is so that he could kill her with good aim. Her fingers curl into tight balls, her weight shifts back, and she waits...

Only to hear him growl, "Hold out your arm."

The door is opened; he steps inside and grabs her injured appendage in his crushing fingers; the pain roars up into her shoulder. Her knees give out, and she crumples to the floor, a scream ripping up through her throat. He kneels beside her, a hard and unreadable expression on his face. "Who are you?" he whispers. His lips moving is what she decides to glare at. _Focus on something else...Forget the...forget the pain_.

He squeezes again.

"AH! My name...my name's Piper."

The Dark Ace drops her arm; her right hand touches the limp and rubber-like appendage and cups it up to her chest. He turns off his sword and sheathes it. Then does something she did not expect: he places his hand beneath her strong arm and hauls her onto the cot._ He remembers me_, her thoughts shudder. _He remembers...Oh, god, he remembers..._But whether or not this fact was to her advantage was yet to be determined.

He turns and leaves, closing and locking the door behind him. She sits upright on the bed for a moment longer, before collapsing face first onto the mattress, her nose enveloped with the smell of dust and mold. Yet she doesn't care, because the odor of confusion manages to stifle all the others. She hopes desperately, prays, for some kind of release from this _hell_.

Time passes strangely here; without windows and no clocks, she can never be sure what time of day it is. She can only assume that it's been several days. _He _comes every few hours, to question, to speak, or just to stare at her from the darkness outside her cell. She sleeps, eats, pushes dust around on the floor, and turns her thoughts inward.

One evening, he comes into her cage, and grabs her shoulder. With a few hard shoves, she's outside, and he's pushing her along, down the corridor, to some unknown destination. A door is open, and she's steered inside. The Dark Ace looks at her solemnly from the door, a hard line serving as a mouth drawn tautly across his face. She straightens and looks at him, defiant.

"I remember you," he says, all of a sudden. She shivers. "You were one of the children. You and that..._Sky Knight._" He cannot bring himself to say Aerrow's name, so deep is the revulsion he holds for him. And all Piper can do is nod, painfully slow. Words are caught in her throat, as if pieces of velcro lined her esophagus, and sounds are made of wool.

He sighs. "Where are they, girl?"

She shakes her head.

He walks in and slams the door shut behind him. They are now both locked inside a dark and confining chamber. She slides to the ground, her hands wrapped about her knees, a fetal position. He strides over to her and strikes...he...he strikes a _match_. Kneels down to her level and hold sit between their eyes; he is only an inch away from her. The dark bangs that sweep across his face stroke her skin, and they feel as a wolf's coat should: a shaggy silk that as no smell, has no feel, no name. Fire dances in and before his eyes, until the match burns down to his gloved hand and is extinguished. But he replaces it quickly with another...and presses it to her neck.

"Ahhhhh..." The burning tip _hurts_, yet her mouth and tongue are dry and shriveled. She cannot scream, not now. He blows out the fire, her skin smoking, the smell of burnt flesh filling the air.

"I don't want to hurt you," he whispers, and she wants to believe he means it, but can't, "but I have to."

--

_but one of my addictions is,_

_i used to play with fire._

--

She lay there for hours, drifting in and out of sleep, in and out of sanity. Her dreams were filled with wolves, dripping blood from their jaws, witches hurling crystals upon the ground, knives drawn across arms that looked very much like her own...

Sweats broke out on the surface of her skin, a sprinkling of salty dew. The door swings open, and a shadow is waiting for her. "The little bird won't sing, eh?"

_No, no...don't let him be back..._

But he _is_...

And she can lie to herself all she wants, but deep inside, this is just what she wants.

The wolf slinks through the ink, slides across the pools of blood that she _swears _are on the floor...until he lights another match, and she sees that the ground is dry. He is not human, he cannot be human, he is nothing more than a predator, and she is the prey that he hunts without mercy. When he grabs her neck, she gasps, when he fists her hair, she grits her teeth and groans, and when he presses the burning match to her neck once more, she screams, yet these hide the truth. He drops her to the floor, and the crack of her bones as she lands is a beautiful sound...The pain is gone, replaced by a feeling of nothing.

His fingers trace her neck, absorb the sweat, touch her bare skin. "Sing, birdie. Where are they? Sing, and all the pain. Is _gone_..."

But he doesn't know. He doesn't realize.

She begins to adore the sight of his face, because she knows he will bring release to the numbness. The wolf's jaws are embedded firmly within her heart, stifling the pulse, muffling the beating, so that she no longer feels her internal clock. All she hears at night, instead of the blood pounding in her ears, is the sound of his voice, and the roar of the wolf, howling in triumph. Vicious, horrid, triumph. A distant part of her knows she cannot let him win, but the part that dominates knows that he has won already.

All she can do is lie on her cot and wait.

--

_do you, do you have a light,_

_do you have the time of day?_

--

_Pffft..._

_SSSS..._

The sound of fire is imagined, for when he comes, there is no candle with him.

She waits for the matches to be lit, waits for them to drill into her skin. Waits for the precious blade to break her permeable outer coating. She's nothing but a sack of meat and water; he's a bulging, rippling, visage of horror. Of fear. Of pain. She raises her hands to her face and wipes at the grime. "What time is it?" she croaks, yet he doesn't answer. He has no sword with him, no weapons, no...no nothing. He stands there, no armor of any sort on his body, and looks at her with eyes that are undeniably human. The wolf is gone, dead, shot by a hunter, or killed by a plague. Either way, his jaws are gone.

A rush of blood, long repressed, shoots into her skull. She is driven to her feet.

The Dark Ace leans against the bars of her cell, staring, staring, as she stands and walks towards him, in a trance. "What _time _is it?"

Silence...momentarily.

And then:

"Time for you to go."

--

_would you, would you save a life,_

_if you had a life to save?_

--

The sunlight is blinding.

Blinding.

Blinding.

The dead wolf's body is wound tightly around her gut, making all her breaths erratic, her movements stiff. He's not telling her _why _he's letting her go, doesn't tell her if he has _permission _to let her go. Just that he _is _letting her go. She feels elated, yet horrid, all at once; the pain of her wounds is nothing compared to the pain of them healing. He shoves her into the hanger bay and gives her the keys to the skimmer. Not a human is in sight when he removes her handcuffs and turns her ride for the sky.

"Why are you-"

"Shut up and fly."

She shuts up.

And she flies.

Piper does not look back. Piper does not look back, because Piper is afraid of what she might see. So she glares at the setting sun...or is it rising? And she searches for her friends. It does not take long for the Condor to appear in her line of vision, does not take long for her to land on the runway and be greeted by laughing friends. They clean and dress her wounds, they send her into the shower with enough soap to last a lifetime, and then...

Then the do what she dreads. They sit her down and demand answers.

She gives them what they would've wanted to hear: she was tortured, yet she said nothing. And then, when given the opportunity, she ran for it, bolting from the empire, evading enemies...shooting down Talons...The lies flow from her tongue, as easily as stories from her grandmother's mouth. The evening after she arrives, (it was a sunrise after all,) Piper collapses into bed and rubs her aching wounds. The still and cold wolf's body rattles as she moves.

Her gramma's words ripple through the waves of her memory.

_Remember the wolves._

And she will never...forget.

_Poof._

Piper blows the candle out. The fire wavers, flutters, dances, then...gone! Nothing left but a smoldering wick...

And the smell of smoke.

* * *

A/N: If some of my friends from school saw what I wrote...I'm quite sure they'd be shocked. Not at the quality, but at the _content_. I mean, cutting yourself? They'd probably confront me and ask me where I learned all this stuff...HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEAHAHAHAHA!

I am OKAY.

I was debating whether or not I should upload this. A) for ze cutting, B) for ze fact zat it is not so good...I mean, the ending's like crap. But rather than find someone to Beta it (aya, Imma lazy,) I'll just post it, and if everyone has some'in bad to say, I'll take it down, correct it, and put it back up. YAY!

PS: Lyrics from SP's "Fire."


End file.
